MackCollier.com

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Five Reasons Why No One Likes You on Twitter

Using Twitter effectively As the rush to Twitter continues, everyone wants to know how to get more followers and be more productive on Twitter.  And increasingly, individuals and companies are wanting to build ‘communities’ on Twitter. Here’s five reasons why many are seeing those efforts fail.

1 – Everyone can see that you are in it for the numbers, not the people.  Twitter is like any other social media tool, it works best when people are SOCIAL in their intent. Amassing a large number of followers so you can beam messages at them rarely works, and almost never works for companies that are trying to build awareness.  If you want people to follow you, treat them as such.

2 – You understand social media, but you don’t understand how to be ‘social’.  I continue to be fascinated to see how people that are supposedly ‘experts’ in social media, use these tools to be interact with others.  To me, being social on Twitter means that you are inviting interaction.  That you are giving people a reason to want to open a dialogue with you.  Even when you make a point, you can discourage communication in how you relay that point to others.  If your tone is constantly ‘I am right, here’s why’, then people will tend to shutdown communication.  If your tone is ‘Here’s what I think, what’s your take?’, then people are encouraged to act.  The tools will only function properly if you know how to use them.

3 – You don’t listen.  Here’s a secret for getting more followers on Twitter: ALWAYS understand that the people that are following you, are smarter (as a group), than you are.  The lesson here is that there is VALUE in the opinions of others.  You can always learn something from others on Twitter.  A big reason why I started #blogchat was because I wanted to LEARN from others on Twitter.  I know how smart the people are that I interact with on Twitter, so I wanted to give them a stage to share their smartitude.  I know that the more I listen to the people I follow and that follow me on Twitter, the smarter I will be.

4 – You don’t care about the people you want to be following you.  Here’s another secret for getting more followers, you actually have to give a damn about other people. I am now following well over 3,000 people, and it’s damn tough to have meaningful interactions with a fraction of that number.  So there are many people I am following that I rarely get the chance to interact with.  But I can if I LOOK for ways to interact and let them know they are important to me.  For example, if I see someone I am following tweet that they just got a new job, I send them a quick ‘Congrats!’ tweet.  It takes 5 secs, but that lets them know I am paying attention and care about them.  It’s all about where your priorities are.  If you care, others will notice.

5 – You don’t promote others.  This is a BIG pet peeve of mine.  I go out of my way to promote others, because it’s another way of letting others on Twitter know I care, but it also creates VALUE for the people that follow me on Twitter.  And guess what?  People appreciate it when you promote them, this isn’t rocket science, it’s social media.  And make an effort to promote the people that are interacting with you, and promoting YOUR content.  It’s all about reinforcing the type of behavior you want to encourage.  Which is an overboiled way of saying that you should say ‘Thank You’ early and often.

For companies and individuals that are looking to leverage Twitter as a way to grow their businesses, these are some steps to avoid, and some ways that I have found success on Twitter.  If you have others steps that have worked for you, please share them in the comments.  Or if your business would like to learn more about how to use Twitter effectively, please email me.

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Your Boss Doesn’t Care About ‘The Conversation’

I cant hear you!

It’s finally happened.  After months of prodding, your skeptical boss has agreed to listen to your pleas for how your company should be blogging. She calls you into her office, and when you sit down, she asks pointedly “So, tell me why we should start a blog.”

You smile with pride and explain that “Blogging is a conversation, and right now we aren’t a part of it.  We need to start a blog so we can join the conversation.”

The sudden frown on your boss’ face tells you that you just watched your company’s blogging strategy die a premature death.

Every week I talk to mid-level managers that are trying to sell their boss on using blogging and social media.  Almost all of them talk about the importance of the conversation, of interaction, of being social.  Anyone that’s read this blog knows that I am a champion of the ability of social media as a set of tools to build interaction and community.

But your skeptical boss isn’t.  Your skeptical boss wants to know how blogging and social media is going to help them grow their business.  They don’t care about ‘the conversation’ simply because they don’t understand how ‘the conversation’ is going to lead them to ‘the sale’.

And unfortunately, the office social media evangelist probably doesn’t understand that connection either.  But if you want your boss to commit to using social media and/or launching a blog, you need to show them how their business will benefit from doing so.

Period.

Social media evangelists understand that a well-positioned blogging strategy can create interactions and community and a larger conversation around that company.  But is that the end business goal of your blog?  How does having more comments per post help you sell more stuff?  How does more RTs from Twitter equal more widgets sold?

These are questions your boss will want to know, and IF you want the buy-in from them, you better have compelling answers.  Often, we stop short in crafting our blog’s positioning.  We think that we need more interaction, but once we have that increased interaction, we still need to build a bridge to the larger business goal for our blog.

Think of it this way; You have well-positioned/valuable blog, which leads to more interaction, which leads to X, which leads to more sales.

You need to determine what ‘X’ is.  That is what your boss wants to hear about, not more interaction or more comments.  If you can explain to your boss what ‘X’ is, and how more comments/interaction relates to and influences ‘X’ (which influences sales), then you’ll get your buy-in.

Then your boss will start to care about ‘the conversation’.  But only if they understand how ‘the conversation’ relates to their larger business goals for their blog.  Your boss probably understands ‘X’.  So you need to sell your boss on ‘X’ as much if not moreso than ‘the conversation’.

So what the hell IS ‘X’?  That’s the magic question, and it will be different for every business.  And it will probably have more than one part.  For example, I will soon be publishing an interview I did recently with a major company, and they explained how they evaluate their blogging efforts.  In their case, they DO have their main blogging goal as being increasing interactions on their blog via more comments and more emails.  But they set that as their main goal because they have seen from years of research that when there is more interaction on their blog, and more POSITIVE interactions with their readers, that they are more likely to create POSITIVE content about the brand, and that positive content shows up in Google search results, which makes a POSITIVE impression on customers that do Google searches for the company and its products.

So this company is fine with having more interactions on their blog be their main blogging goal, because they understand how more interactions leads to more sales.  But the key is they set that as their main blogging goal after studying their efforts and how their customers are buying.  Which is why meticulously studying your blogging efforts and tracking stats is a must, but that’s a post for another day.

For your company, your ‘X’ could be more traffic, it could be more links, it could be more traffic from the blog to your website, etc.  But the odds are your boss understands ‘X’ a lot more than they do the importance of ‘the conversation’.  If you want your boss to launch a blog, you need to show her how the blog will help her business.  You need to understand what needs to happen AFTER ‘the conversation’ happens on your blog, and how that ultimately helps your business reach its larger business goals.

PS: If you have questions about selling your boss on social media (or need help in launching a social media strategy) and would rather email me your questions, contact me at mackDOTcollierATgmailDOTcom

Pic via Flickr user pjbeardsley

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Ten Questions Your Company Should Ask Before it Starts Blogging

BlogIs your company about to launch a blog?  Great, but before you do, make sure you have asked (and answered) these ten questions:

1 – Why start a blog? Why not join Twitter, or set up a page of Facebook, or do nothing at all?  Before you launch a blog, make sure that it makes sense for your unique situation.  You need to be able to give an answer to this question based on your findings about your customers, your company, your competitors, and your industry.  Saying ’cause everyone is launching one’ is NOT a viable reason.

2 – Who will do the blogging? Will your marketing department handle the writing, or will it be spread out over several areas of your company?  How many writers will you have?  It’s a big job for one person, 2-3 writers is much better.  Or will you let your customer evangelists write the blog for you?  This is a gutsy move but often results in a far more interesting blog.  But training time must be considered.  Make sure you know who and how many people will be writing for your blog.

3 – What will be the focus of your blog? ‘Well we’ll blog about our company, of course!’  Stop for a minute and think about how interesting that would REALLY be to your customers.  Think about how you can create content around/about your company’s products and services, instead of the product/service itself.  Don’t blog about cameras, blog about photography, don’t blog about dog shampoo, blog about pet grooming.  The point is, make sure your blog will create valuable content for your readers.  Get your focus set before your start.

4 – What will be your blog’s comment policy? Get this down so your readers will know what’s expected of them, and when their comments will appear.  Will you moderate comments, or let them go through immediately?  If you’ll moderate, who is going to approve comments, and how will you ensure that it’s done in a timely basis?  What specific terms will go into your policy?

5 – How will you measure the effectiveness of your blog? What metrics will you track to determine if your blog is a success?  It could be traffic, or traffic sent back to your website, or reader engagement such as comments and/or links.  But find some way to hold your blog accountable.

6 – Can you devote time to interacting with readers OFF your blog? This is almost never considered, but is vital to growing your blog.  Once you figure out the amount of time that you will need to spend on your blog (writing posts, moderating comments, replying to comments) you need to spend at LEAST that much time off your blog reading other blogs and commenting on other blogs.  Don’t sell yourself short here, as the more time you spend connecting with your readers in their space, the quicker your blogging efforts will succeed.

7 – Will your blog be on your main website, or have its own URL? Two or three years ago, I would have strongly advised you to put your blog on a seperate URL away from your website.  This was because in 2006 or so, blogs hosted away from the company’s main website were seen as being more credible than those hosted on the company’s main website.  Today, this isn’t as big of a concern.  If you host the blog on your website, you’ll get a bit of a traffic and SEO benefit, while if you host your blog seperately, it will likely be seen as a bit more credible, but your website won’t get as much of a traffic or SEO benefit.  So it’s up to you, and feel fine choosing either alternative.

8 – Which blogging platform will you choose? When you ask this question, also consider if your company can handle setting up your blog and working with the coding.  Most larger companies have a web team on staff that can handle this easily, but a smaller company/business might have to outsource this.  In general, consider if you want to have a blog that you ‘launch and forget’ or if you want to customize your blog to add functionality for your readers.  Certain platforms, like Blogger and WordPress.com are more of the ‘plug n play’ variety, while ones like WordPress.org and Movable Type offer you the ability to greatly customize the blogging experience, assuming you have the staff in place to get the blog set up correctly for you.  If not, this will be an expense you’ll likely have to outsource.

9 – Will you need to outsource in order to get your blog off the ground? If you need to hire a firm/consultant to help you launch your blog, make SURE that the firm/consultant provides your company with training on what they will be doing to help you get the blog off the ground.  They should train you on how to craft content, write compelling blog posts, respond to comments, interact with readers on other sites, everything.  Don’t outsource the actual blogging to others, instead have them TEACH YOU how to do this.  This is exactly why I stress teaching in the blog consulting services I provide.

10 – Ask yourself if you are ready to launch a blog.  After you’ve answered the first nine questions, you need to stop and ask yourself one last time if you are really ready to launch a blog.  This way you’ve done your homework, and know that a blog is right for you, instead of just launching one because of the hype.

Good luck, and remember if you need some help along the way to consult the Blogging 101 section of the Social Media Library. If you have questions about getting your company’s blogging efforts off the ground, please email me.

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How to Launch a Successful Blogger Outreach Program in One Day

Using Google to connect with bloggersFor any company that is looking to leverage the blogosphere in its marketing communications efforts, here’s all you need to do:

9:00 am – 11:00 am: Go to Google Blog Search and search for people that are talking about your company. Make a list of at least 20 people that have blogged about your company within the last 2 weeks. Concentrate on bloggers that appear to be evangelizing your company, but also add some bloggers that are critical of your efforts.

11:00 am – 2:00 pm: After you have your list of at least 20 bloggers that are talking about your company, go back to every blog and respond to the blog post where your company is mentioned. Clearly identify yourself, and your position with the company. Address only the topics presented, and any relevant information. Invite replies from readers. Thank the blogger for the comment, and then go back and email them thanking them for their comments, and let them know that you are available for a short phone discussion or interview, if they are interested.

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm: Subscribe to the feeds from all the blogs you commented on, as well as their comment feeds, if available.

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm: Visit your list of blogs again, and read any new posts, and also reply to any comments that were addressed to you, or relevant comments that other readers have left.

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm: Answer any emails from bloggers, and if possible, schedule times to discuss topics raised with blogger on the phone, or via interview.

This will get your blogger-outreach program off the ground. From this point, every day you should read the blogs via your feed reader. Also, at least twice a week, you should again check Google Blog Search for new mentions about your company, and repeat the process.

Why this will benefit your company:

1 – It will get you noticed in the blogosphere. This is a coordinated effort to reach out to bloggers and to engage them in their space. What you are basically saying is that ‘I respect you enough to take the time to respond.’ That’s HUGE!

2 – It will show bloggers that you are serious about starting a conversation with them. This is why you can’t do this once, you have to make it a habit to read blogs from your evangelists (and even detractors). This wins even more respect among bloggers.

3 – It will get bloggers talking about your company. It is still rare for companies to make a sincere effort to monitor and respond to bloggers as part of a marketing strategy. It also encourages bloggers to evangelize your company, AND, just as importantly, it encourages OTHER bloggers to evangelize your company. You are literally creating a network of bloggers that will be more likely to promote and evangelize your company.

4 – It will greatly improve your social media and marketing efforts. Simply talking to your customers and potential customers in their space in the blogosphere is a wonderful way to better understand them, but also to better understand how social media works. It’s one thing to hear about how quickly ideas spread in the blogosphere, it’s quite another to spend a few hours talking to bloggers on their blogs, and then to see how quickly other bloggers link to your actions.

5 – It means you stop wasting time on lame-ass mass email pitches to bloggers. These almost never work, and frequently backfire. Actually taking the time to talk to us in OUR space is MUCH more effective.

6 – It shows bloggers that ‘you get it’. This makes bloggers much more likely to pay attention to your company, and blog about you, your products, and marketing efforts. Which means the network of bloggers that are talking about your company is further expanded. Which doesn’t hurt your company’s Google Juice either.

Again, this program can be launched in a day, for free. Why not give it a whirl tomorrow?Using Google to connect with bloggers

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Welcome!

Thanks for stopping by, let me give you a quick run-down of what you will find on this site. The information here is divided into three areas:

1 – My blog and social media consulting services. Click here if you want to learn more about my blog consulting services, or here if you want to learn more about my social media consulting services, or here if you would like to learn more about where I will be speaking, or how to hire me to speak at your event. Each page also has my prices for these services, and please email me if you’d like a custom quote, or want to discuss your particular needs. And don’t hesitate to email me if you have a general question.

2 -Social Media Library.  Here you’ll find some of the best posts I’ve written on social media over the last 4 years.  These were written as instructional posts to help you with your social media efforts, and are organized according to the following subjects: Blogging 101, Social Media Case Studies, Social Media Monitoring, and Twitter 101.  I’ll be updating these sections often, so please check back!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Your Social Media Strategy Starts With Monitoring

If your company is ready to dive into the social media waters, which tools such they examine first? Blogs? Facebook? Twitter? Wrong. Try Google.

Before you can launch a successful social media strategy, you must begin monitoring existing conversations about your company. This has several advantages:

1 – It lets you be proactive in responding to complaints from customers. Want to impress a customer that’s blogged about a problem they are having with your product? Leave a comment 15 mins after their post goes up, then follow up with an email attempting to help them with their problem. If you are sincere in trying to help that customer, you’re almost assured of flipping her from being an angry customer, to a passionate advocate for you.

2 – It helps create evangelists for your brand. See above. Not only are you giving angry customers a reason to become a fan, but you’re validating to your existing fans why they love your company. If Bob is passionately promoting your company on his blog, but stopping by his blog and leaving a quick ‘Thank You!’ comment, you validate why he loves you to begin with.

3 – It increases your brand equity. By actively monitoring the blogosphere and other social sites, your company can develop a reputation of reaching out to and helping customers. Also, as you gain a reputation for being responsive, it helps set you apart from competitors that aren’t as responsive.

4 – It makes you more familiar with social media tools and sites. Once you begin monitoring the blogosphere and social media sites for company mentions, you’ll begin to better understand how ideas spread in this space, and how blogs work. You get a better understand of how your customers are communicating with each other and how those interactions change based on the site they are on at that moment.

 

Remember that monitoring what customers are already saying about your company and your space simply improves your chances of communicating effectively with those customers.

 

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Ten Quick Tips For Growing Your Blog’s Subscribers and Comments

 

Subscribers and comments are two of the most popular metrics bloggers use to measure if their blog is a success or not. I’d like to share some ways that I have increased my blog’s subscribers and the number of comments I get per post. Your mileage may vary, but hopefully many of you can benefit from at least some of these tips:

Subscribers

  • Set up a Feedburner account. This should be one of the very first things you do when you set-up your blog.
  • Once you do, burn a feed for your blog, and then set up your account so all your different feed versions will redirect to your Feedburner feed. This is important because it then gives you a much better idea of how many subscribers you have, and how they are accessing your feed. Feedburner’s blog explains how to make the switch(for Blogger blogs). I saw my number of reported feed readers double overnight by doing this.
  • Ask for subscribers. Amazingly, asking for what you want really does work! Feel free to remind readers at the end of posts that if they enjoyed this content, to please subscribe to receive all your posts.
  • Give your readers the ability to subscribe to your blog’s posts via email. Feedburner can set this up for you as well. Always give your readers as many choices as possible for how they can receive your content.

Growing your number of subscribers and comments on your blog

Comments

  • Ask for reader feedback. One thing I figured out VERY early on in my blogging journey is that my readers are, as a group, always smarter than I am. Since I always learn from you guys, I want your feedback.
  • Take a definite stance. This is actually something I need to work on. But when you take a definite stance on an issue, it makes it easier for those that agree with you to chime in, and it makes it easier for those that disagree, to express why they do. And when you have contrasting opinions, that usually leads to a more robust conversation.
  • Put a ‘window’ on your comments, in your blog post. Let’s say that I write a post and it gets a couple of comments. Then Gavin leaves an incredible comment that sparks the exchange to take off and grow into a conversation. Why not go back and edit your post and add Gavin’s comment at the end of your post? And add a link to Gavin’s blog when you do. This is a great way to show your other readers Gavin’s comment, and it will likely prompt them to check out the comments section to see what the smart kids are saying!
  • Leave comments on and link to other blogs. I’ve said it a million times, but the best way to grow your blog, is to leave it. Make a point to comment on the blogs of your readers that comment on your blog, or at least link to their blog posts. This is why I love Twitter, cause it’s a great way for me to quickly and easily share links with my followers, and I try to share links from bloggers that comment on my blog, first.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback from your social networks. This comes with a big caveat that you have to be careful about how often you do this, and you need to also link to other blogger’s posts. If the only time I see you is twice a week on Twitter asking me to please come leave a comment on your new blog posts, I probably won’t do it. But if I see you everyday on Twitter chatting and linking to other blog posts, THEN when you ask me to please read your new post, I probably will.

What did I miss? How are you growing your blog’s subscribers and comments?

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Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Social Media and Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans

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“Think Like a Rock Star is the rediscovery of the simple but powerful truth: the ability to acquire new customers depends on the ability to engage, ignite your existing customers and convert them into passionate fans.”

An Amazon Bestseller and the most requested McGraw-Hill publication ever submitted to NetGalley, Think Like a Rock Star is for any brand that wants to learn how to cultivate passionate fans that drive real business growth.  Every single chapter has detailed, step-by-step instructions showing you exactly how to create a fan-centric brand.  Tired of reading books that are long on ‘why-to’ and short on ‘how-tos’?  Then you’ll love Think Like a Rock Star.

Here’s some of the many areas covered in Think Like a Rock Star:

  • An entire chapter with detailed, step-by-step instructions showing your brand how to respond to customers online, especially customers that are leaving negative comments about your company online.  Including multiple case studies of businesses that correctly and incorrectly handled criticism from customers, this chapter shows you not only how to respond to angry customers, but to do so in a way that can actually convert them into fans of your brand.  
  • How to design a content strategy that focuses on The Bigger Idea and cultivates fans of your brand.  Creating compelling content is an area that many brands struggle with.  I show you what the three methods are to creating compelling content that your customers will find value in, and that will convert them into fans.
  • How to structure an Influencer/Blogger outreach program, and a detailed look at the advantages and disadvantages of these programs versus connecting with your fans.
  • The exact blueprint for creating a fan-centric brand.  Everything is covered, right down to internally and external staffing, core responsibilities of each employee position, everything.  Additional sections cover creating and launching a brand ambassador program, even a section on how to measure the ROI of your efforts.

 

Still not convinced? Check the reviews on Amazon and GoodReads.  Here’s what some of them are saying:

“THINK LIKE A ROCK STAR is so engaging, well written and useful that it should be required reading not only for marketing and PR professionals but for anyone who represents a brand, from the CEO to the sales team to the receptionist who takes the customer’s first phone call. The very fact that I now want to sing this book’s praises is testimony that what Collier writes about in this title actually works.” – Angie Finley

“I am actually considering buying a copy of this book and sending it to the marketing departments of each of my favorite companies – those to which my undying loyalty goes largely unnoticed and unappreciated, and to the small local businesses I support that DON’T make the effort to get to know me despite my status as a frequent customer.” – JL Keats

“This is one book that I will be sharing with my team, from our customer service superstars to our editorial team to our sales group. Aside from being engaging and easy to read- I mean come on, we all love rock stars!- Mack provides the reader with concrete, actionable take-aways that can be immediately applied to any business setting.” – Rebecca Amy Todd

Here’s a video review from John Bellamy, who works for Dell (one of the case studies in the book)

Hopefully by now I’ve sold you on why you should buy Think Like a Rock Star.  But if you still aren’t convinced, email me and I will be happy to send you the Introduction from the book, which will give you an idea of what it’s all about.

Here’s some of the places where you can buy Think Like a Rock Star online:

Also, if you would like for me to present Think Like a Rock Star at your event or do a workshop on how brands can connect with their fans, please email me for pricing and availability.

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Who is Mack Collier?

Mack1Recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 25 Social Media Marketers in the World, Mack Collier is a social media strategist, trainer and speaker located in Alabama that specializes in helping companies better connect with its customers via social media and digital marketing channels. He has been actively immersed in social media since 2005, and in that time, has helped businesses of all shapes and sizes better connect with their customers via these amazing tools and sites. His clients include businesses of all sizes, from sole proprietorships, to Fortune 100 companies.  His goal is to help his clients create connections with their customers, and nurture them into relationships that help grow their bottom line.

Mack is a highly sought-after speaker on social media and customer-engagement topics and has presented at some of the top social media conferences and events, including South By Southwest Interactive, Blog World and New Media Expo, Content Marketing World, and Social Media Tourism Symposium.  Additionally, he founded and moderates #Blogchat, the largest Twitter Chat on the internet, where thousands of people meet each Sunday night on Twitter to discuss a different blogging topic.  The amazing growth of #Blogchat, first on Twitter and now as a series of Live events, speaks to Mack’s ability to leverage Social Media tools as a way to build community and make connections.

Additionally, Mack’s thoughts and expertise on Marketing, Brand Advocacy and Social Media have been sought by some of the world’s most prestigious news sources, including The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, USA Today, CNBC, ESPN, The Washington Post, CNET and Entrepreneur Magazine.  His first business book, Think Like A Rock Star: How to Create Social Media and Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans was published in 2013 by McGraw-Hill and is an Amazon Best Seller.